A TransAsia airways plane carrying 58 people crashed
into a river this morning just three minutes after it took off in
Taipei, Taiwan, and 15 people miraculously survived the crash, including
a 2 year old boy. The 15 were pulled from the wreckage of the plane by
rescuers, 43 others are either dead or missing. Sad. The little boy who
was rescued wasn’t even seriously injured. See the pics after the cut..

Photo credit: AFP/Getty Images

A TransAsia airways plane carrying 53 passengers & five crew crashed
into a shallow river this morning February 4th in Taiwan, killing at
least 12 people. 16 people have been rescued alive and about 30 are
missing.

The crash was caught on the dashcam of a car driving through the bride.
It shows the plane clipping a bridge shortly after take-off this morning
from Taipei’s Sungshan Airport and crashing into the Keelung river. The death toll in the TransAsia Airways flight was expected to rise as
rescue crews cleared the mostly sunken fuselage in the Keelung River a
couple dozen meters (yards) from the shore. Teams of rescuers in rubber
rafts clustered around the wreckage.The ATR 72 prop-jet aircraft was flying on its side, with one wing
scraping past Taiwan’s National Freeway No. 1 just seconds before it
plunged into the river, local television images showed. It was the
airline’s second French-Italian-built ATR 72 to crash in the past year.

The plane’s wings also hit a taxi on the freeway, seriously injuring the
driver. Rescue workers are currently at the scene and have been able to
pull people alive from the wreckage. But they believe most of the
people in front of the plane are like to have lost their lives as they
continue rescue efforts. See the dramatic photos and video of the crash
after the cut…

The plane lost contact at 10.53am on and was found in Keelung river
in Taipei. The ministry of transportation contacted the disaster
response centre 20 minutes later.
Confirmed on the flight are 53 passengers and five crew members,
totalling 58 people. Taipei city rescue teams are in operation, having
rescued 16 people who were admitted to a nearby hospital, with two
announced dead on arrival.
Several fire engines, ambulances, water craft and almost 170 rescue staff have been dispatched.

Wednesday’s flight had taken off from Taipei’s downtown Sungshan
Airport en route to the outlying Taiwan-controlled Kinmen islands.

Civil aviation officials said the flight took off at 10:53
a.m. and lost contact with controllers two minutes later. Thirty-one
passengers were from China, Taiwan’s tourism bureau said. Kinmen’s
airport is a common link between Taipei and China’s Fujian province.
Taiwan’s civil aviation authority said 15 people were killed out of
28 pulled from the fuselage and that 30 people were still missing.
Wu
Jun-hong, a Taipei Fire Department official who was coordinating the
rescue, said the missing people were still in the fuselage or had been
pulled downriver, he said.
“At the moment, things don’t look too
optimistic,” Wu told reporters at the scene. “Those in the front of the
plane are likely to have lost their lives.” Rescuers were pulling luggage from an open plane door to clear the
fuselage, and Wu said they planned to build a pontoon bridge to
facilitate those efforts.
The plane’s wing also hit a taxi,
the driver of which was injured, on the freeway just before it crashed
into the river, Taiwanese broadcaster TVBS reported.
Taiwan’s
Ministry of National defence said it had sent 165 people and eight boats
to the riverside rescue scene, joining fire department rescue crews.
A TransAsia media office declined comment on possible reasons for the
crash, deferring to a news conference scheduled for later on Wednesday.
Taiwan’s Civil Aeronautics Administration also was also unable to
discuss possible causes of the crash.
Another ATR 72 operated by
the same Taipei-based airline crashed in the outlying Taiwan-controlled
islands of Penghu last July 23, killing 48 at the end of a typhoon for
reasons that are still under investigation.